Only 36 percent of SNS users say that the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to keeping up with political news, and only 25 percent felt the same about SNS being a place for debating political issues, the Pew survey found.

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Democrats used SNS more than Republicans as a way to follow political news, debate issues and finding other people who share their views on political topics.

For example, 48 percent of Democrats said that SNS are “very important” or “somewhat important” for keeping up with political news, compared with 34 percent of Republicans.

These self-reported figures, however, are somewhat undercut by the finding that the vast majority of SNS users, 84 percent, say they have posted little or nothing related to politics in recent status updates, comments or links, according to Pew.

Further, a majority of users, 59 percent, say that their friends have posted little or nothing about politics. Only 9 percent of respondents said that what their friends on SNS share and post is mostly about politics.

Also notable is the very modest way in which SNS impacts political involvement: 25 percent of respondents said they became more active on a political issue after reading about it on the site, and 16 percent said that they changed their views after discussing it or reading something on the sites.

The Pew survey was conducted Jan. 20 to Feb. 19 among 2,253 adults. Of this group, 1,407 used social network sites, and the margin of error for the subgroup is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.